Green Hell

Bars, Schools and Gobshites

In December of '08, the wife and I had yet another of our screaming fight/heartrending makeup scenes -- all in the space of two hours. Said drama, while irritating, portended neither the end of the world as we know it (God is entirely too displeased with me to do me a favor of that magnitude…) nor of the relationship. It was just a predictable consequence of Latin and Celtic tempers meeting head-on and engaging in the ultimate "communication breakdown." By the time the tears (and blood) dried, we'd effected a meeting of the minds (exposed grey-matter is especially conducive to that end, by the way) and renewed our commitment to a project that had long been a bone of contention between us.

Since there's no better way of letting bygones be bygones than hoisting a tankard at the local boozer, we did just that. A pint or two of Miller Lite and Bass Ale later; all was well with our world – for all that we waxed exceedin' dismayed over the fucked-up state of the world in general. (Waxin' exceedin' dismayed over the fucked-up state of the world in general is our favorite pastime, by the way...)

As we backed out of the driveway en route to the watering hole, I noticed a folded piece of paper taped to our mailbox. Aquiver with curiosity, I retrieved and opened it. Scurrying for the shelter of our pickup truck, (it was colder than a witch's tit that Friday), I perused the contents aloud, the better to share them with Mags. What I read was as hilarious as it was nauseating: an urgent bulletin from the homeowners association, summoning all and sundry to a pitchfork-and-torch session in defense of local property values – and the chiiiiiilllldren, of course.

As if I give a flying fuck about either – especially the latter.

The late W.C. Fields perfectly expressed my attitude towards children: "Go away, kid. Ya bother me."

  Children are annoying, expensive, and an acute pain in the ass. If I had a dollar for every time some hyperactive crib-crawler made an already miserable flight doubly so by kicking the back of my seat; for every time some squalling brat's temper-tantrum upset my digestion (the very sight of an ankle-biter in a restaurant is enough to send me screaming into the night); and for every shopping trip upon which I've barely avoided colliding with some sticky-faced, skate-shoe-wearing, Ritalin-popping pork-pie, I'd be richer than George Soros (but less of a power-crazed, sociopathic, narcissistic baw'bag, I hope).

Beyond these (and other) glaring character flaws, children are – well -- nasty. They belch, break wind and pick their noses at inappropriate times and in inappropriate places – and they do so unconsciously. Situational context notwithstanding, they behave in ways that would shame a six-month-old puppy or kitten – but for no apparent reason. I can tolerate (nay, applaud) mooning, streaking, or farting into megaphones at politicians' funerals as forms of social protest. I can't, however, abide some rugrat mining for nose-gold while I'm trying to polish off an already unappetizing, extortionately overpriced wad of unagi.

The last straw for me, though, was when most Roswell bars banned smoking. Granted, children weren't to blame (they can't hold public office, thank God…), but no sooner had the ink on the bill dried than local parents began dragging their genetically blighted progeny with them when they went out on the town. Needless to say, this obnoxious trend took a king-sized corn- and peanut-studded shit on my riff. The few times a year I play (bar)fly on the wall, it's to focus my bloodshot, multifaceted yeën on the darker elements of the human condition – not to watch a veritable sounder of five-year-olds play tag amongst the stools and tables, upend the jukebox, or play Hyperkinetic Refined Sugar Power Rangers with the fucking pool cues.

(Beyond the "annoyance factor" -- if the Gentle Reader will pardon the digression -- I wonder what the fuck goes through whatever passes for their parents' "minds." Why would any reasonable person want to take a child to a bar in the first place? Is there some semi-secret timetable, according to which kids should be exposed to substance abuse, profanity, off-color humor, informal gambling, chemically induced/enhanced violence and casual sex by a certain age? And if so, isn't that why we have public schools? Just curious…)

"Well, l'il Brandon's nearly seven now, hon. And Brittany's six. I suppose it's high time he got into his first real knock-down, drag-out and scored a piece of ass. And she might as well learn to fend off Jarquecius 'Thunderbird' Washington and the local chapter of the Hog-Ridin' Rumpkins in the meantime."

At least there's still Mazzy's – thank Dionysus. A true bar in the best sense of the word, it's dim, smoky, cavernous, and has no shortage of dartboards, pool tables or interesting characters. Sadly enough, it's a near-anachronism in this sick, sorry, smoke-free, politically correct day and age; a game preserve for that most endangered of species, the North American Blue-Collar Barfly, with nearly all the features of its natural (and vanishing) habitat – and I'm glad it's that way. In short, the only thing missing is the hardwood floor – and the kids. It'll probably be a cold day in hell before I see any in Mazzy's – knock on wood. And have I mentioned that I don't like kids?

In addition to being killjoys (even if inadvertently), children are cruel. Whether pulling the legs off insects, tying cans to dogs' tails, or singling out other children for abuse and ostracism, rugrats' blood-thirst leaves mosquitoes, hagfish, leeches, chupacabras and Elizabeth Bathory's ghost pea-green with envy.

Hopefully, eight paragraphs of anti-rugrat invective have established that I ain't over-fond of the little bastards. When they get their collective shit together and take my quality of life into account, I'll reciprocate. But not a nanosecond earlier.

Quid pro quo, folks. Quid pro fuckin' quo. 'Nuff said?

This brings us to the matters of property values and the homeowners' association's call to arms. This degenerate, bastard descendant of the Anglo-Saxon folcmod -- like the degenerate, bastard descendants of Anglo-Saxons who authored it – didn't even bother to do its own dirty work. Pale and limp as a post-2006 necocon's dick, it simply flapped in the wind, hoping to be noticed. Mistaking it for some poor, self-employed slob's bid for work (and thus as a courageous act of defiance against the homeowners' association and a few draconian local and federal laws), I gave it the once-over.

By way of repaying my courtesy, it "gied me a scunner."

Apparently, the Fulton County Board of Education's latest redistricting scheme had tied many an upwardly mobile pecker in a knot, and placed many a nipped-and-tucked tit in the wringer.

Lest I appear too flippant or dismissive, I'll concede that in Alpharetta -- which faced the same problem – many parents were justifiably concerned. In a move nastily reminiscent of the '70s busing fiasco, the BOE planned to "fix what [wasn't] broke" by shipping children willy-nilly to schools miles away from their neighborhoods. In the cases of the Coventry and Gatewood subdivisions, both of which are within walking distance of Cogburn Woods Elementary School, this thinly disguised social engineering project was especially sickening: local children would be bused to distant Manning Oaks Elementary.

As is usually the case when treating with the government, obtaining the whys and wherefores required the services of the Delphic Oracle, a visit to Mimir's Well and a metric shitload (that's 1.2 Avoirdupois shitloads) of crystal balls, ouija boards, and tarot decks. Apparently lacking these resources, the local catbox liner (The Alpharetta-Roswell Revue and News) sent one of its intrepid staffers to chat with board member Katie Reeves.

According to the ARRN: "Reeves said the system's redistricting plan is based foremost on hard data, thereby removing arbitrary changes. Planning staff considers four primary criteria when drawing lines, then considers secondary criteria when a clear outcome is not present."

As the esteemed Ms. Reeves neither cited the "hard data," nor delineated the "primary and secondary criteria," her statement was – well – rather arbitrary, if not downright tautological: ("We use undefined criteria and unspecified data to prevent arbitrary changes.")

Thanks, sweetheart. That's ever so fucking reassuring…

Three more Reeves "gems" were especially noteworthy:

"We do not have a vote on the maps from the community, we have comments." (Translation: "Fuck you. We, the local government, know far better than you what's best for you, your communities and your children.")

"The Planning Department is making the maps –not me." (Translation: Don't bother me with this shit. It isn't my problem. I'm passing the buck.")

And I've saved the best for last:

"It is kind of a slap in the face to everyone who participated in the process to have a board member go in and change things."

Como se dice, "What the faaaaahck?"

Heaven forefend that any board member should receive even a slap on the wrist, let alone a slap in the face. No, in Katie's elitist world, the li'l duck feelings of silly, pretentious nabobs are far more important than the "petty" concerns of the parents whose children are the Almighty Board's lawful prey and property, to be disposed of as its members see fit.

Care to run that one by me again? Who, exactly, is slapping whom in the face? Jesus Christ! A psychologist could have a field day with that one…

"projection (prə -jĕk'shən)n. 7. Psychology. The naïve or unconscious attribution of one's own feelings, attitudes or desires to others." -- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

Having admitted that my own feelings, attitudes and desires parallel the Alpharettans' in this case, I'll turn my attention toward Roswell and the HOA's bulletin. Had the HOA voiced the same concerns, I'd have been equally sympathetic. Unfortunately, the "God-Bless-Our-Investment-doormat-crowd" chose hysteria and cheap shots, which I'll address in order.

Hysteria materialized as the dread spectre of plunging property values. Apparently, the fact that property values were already lower than snake-shit – nationwide-- somehow eluded this fuckin' "brain trust." Its members (who often remind me of the "member" danglin' 'twixt m' front pockets) are likewise oblivious to the fact that the laws of the market preclude perpetual growth as absolutely as the laws of nature forbid perpetual motion or free energy. When a house becomes a mere investment instead of a home, its "real-world" value fluctuates according to the laws of supply and demand. All investments entail risk, as a result of which some result in gain, others in loss. Houses are no exception to the rule.

End of fuckin' story -- and welcome to Economics 101.

Moreover, since all systems tend toward entropy (welcome to Physics 101, Heisenberg, Punk Rock and public schools…), the current situation was predictable. And does any rational person truly believe that redistricting will be any more detrimental than overbuilding (which began in the '90's with those jerry-built Torrey subdivisions -- each a slum waiting to happen), failure to keep infrastructure apace with growth, or the wholesale conversion of Crabapple Road to strip-malls and "assisted living" communities?

Pardon my Tocharian-B, but gimme a fuckin' break.

Having dismissed the hysteria as just that, I'll tackle the cheap shot – which I suspect is the heart of the matter.

Apparently, the HOA's real worry is the fact that ESL (English as a Second Language) students will be bused in from beyond the Alpharetta Highway "Pale." In their own words: "One of the options currently proposed would overcrowd our elementary school, bring a large number of ESOL [sic] (English as Second Language) students and significantly lower our property values." (Emphasis mine.)

Given local demographics, the HOA obviously doesn't mean the Hmong, the Amish, the Seminoles or Gaelic-speakers from the Outer Hebrides when it says "ESOL [sic] students." The cunts are employing a mealy-mouthed euphemism for "wetbacks," and we all know it.

Having no children of my own –and no reason to give a rat's ass about the local propaganda mill's ethnic composition, I've no idea (and once again; no reason to give a rat's ass) as to which kids attend which schools these days.

When I was a larva (a very, very long time ago), Roswell had 8,500 inhabitants and four or five elementary schools. Roswell Elementary took in the riff-raff from Frazier Street, Oxbo Drive and the tiny cluster of gub'mint housing off Oak Street. North Roswell Elementary served the MMC and UMC kids from Hollyberry, Saddle Creek, Northgate, Greenway Hills, Land O' Lakes, etc. – and the odd, mentally gifted cow from the farms north of Etris Road. Mimosa catered to LMC and MMC children from the Warsaw/Old Roswell Road area, and Mountain Park was the preserve of the insufferable snobs from Brookfield West.

(I haven't the foggiest notion of where the kids from the Dickensian/Swiftian world of Raintree and Martin's Landing went to school – if they did at all. Perhaps they attended hedge- or mission schools, or were sent off to workhouses to die of silicosis or brown lung. Perhaps they raided the RIF Bookmobile when not otherwise occupied by begging for bread in the streets or waylaying passers-by… Just kidding, of course -- the area east of GA 400 was "Indian Country" until I got my driver's license at seventeen, so I can't comment.)

As the population has since increased tenfold, I'm sure more schools have been built -- although I know neither where, nor who attends them. The elementary school nearest my house is Sweet Apple, on Crabapple Road – quite a walk from "Little Tijuana." If I'm not mistaken, there's another not far away, at the corner of Elkins and Hembree – although that one might be a middle school. Having (to reiterate) no children, I don't really care.

And speaking of not caring: I don't plan to sell my house, but rather to will it to one of my younger kin (or a deserving, decent family) when the Grim Reaper comes 'round for me. Therefore, its resale value is irrelevant. In a way, I might even benefit from lower property values, as they'd lead to lower property taxes.

You make your investments and I'll make mine, fellow citizens…

Leaving my "personal economy" (Thanks, Herman! I like that term…) aside, I'll return to the matter of the "ESOL [sic] students."

When I read the line aloud to Mags, who is both Hispanic and ESL (until the age of five, she spoke only Spanish), neither of us knew whether to laugh or barf. Since she's created more wealth than most of the HOA wankers could ever hope to, their half-assed, "Nazi lite" appeal to racial purity pissed both of us off.

"Heaven forefend, dear!" says I, "Next thing you know, they'll demand that we rent to the Irish, share our drinking fountains with Negroes, admit Jews to the Country Club, and allow tradesmen the use of the front door! The horror! The horror! Whatever is the world coming to?"

Now I'm the last guy on earth to bleat the "R-word " -- and with good reason. Nowadays, the term "racist" is utterly meaningless. In modern, real-world parlance, a putative "racist" is simply a Caucasoid who offends the "delicate" (Gwine shub mah fo'ty up da ho'bag a-yuss) sensibilities of his darker brothers. Should one truly suspect a recently arrived cabbie who reads neither his/her own native idiom -- nor an English-language roadmap -- of leading a rich, fulfilling intellectual and/or spiritual life, I'd invite said worthy to befriend the critter.

No takers? I didn't think so. And I think even less of using the "racist" tag to demonize personal tastes insofar as "acceptable" behavior is concerned.

"Racism?"

Please…

Ask a recently arrived Haitian Voodoo priestess not to change her kid's diaper on the salad bar at Ryan's, for example, and presto! You've just become a "racist." (Interestingly enough, my wife doesn't call me a "racist" when I get on her nerves -- she just calls me an asshole.) Furthermore, some of the most blatantly racist (in the old, literal sense of the word) behavior I've ever seen has been non-white on non-white. This neatly shit-cans several the left's cherished myths – unless one lacks sensory organs and a measurable IQ.

By now, I hope I've made it clear that I'm anything but a touchy-feely, multi-culti, starry-eyed pinko. I reject the asinine "villains & victims" model of history, for the most part. I don't buy into "cultural relativism," I don't believe we can "all just get along" (most of human history indicates otherwise), and I'm convinced that like good fences, good borders make good neighbors.

But this just takes the fucking cake. As nearly as I can tell, the HOA is upset over having Latin American kids bused in from nearby apartment complexes. They weren't, I note, reluctant to have these children's parents mow their lawns and paint their houses on the cheap. They didn't oppose the immigrant tide when it only lowered hourly wages and/or put native-born labor out of work. They turned a blind eye to the increase in crime and the decrease in quality of life – as long as neither impacted them directly. But the worm has apparently turned. Distraught at the prospect of li'l Brandi and Dylan rubbing shoulders with li'l Juanita and Enrique, they'd now deny the latter the "better life" they once assured us their parents were seeking.

Given the prevalence of Bush- and McCain-worship in this part of North Fulton, this isn't surprising -- just disgusting. It's one thing to tout the alleged "benefits" of diversity on the letters page of The Roswell Neighbor, and another entirely to experience it firsthand, it seems. Bluntly put: these opportunistic wankers would have applauded the abortive McCain-Kennedy amnesty coup – provided that their own little, lily-white ones could be kept away from Bush's "little brown ones."

Racism and hypocrisy rolled into one steaming package, unmistakably redolent of bullshit. I suppose they've somehow forgotten that "Family values don't end at the border." (And it's possible that they don't -- I'll ask the next vato I find loitering behind the bowling alley how he defines "family values" and then get back to you.) I suppose they've forgotten that our burgeoning immigrant community exists only to do "jobs Americans won't do," as our retardate of a former president incessantly reminded us. And I further suppose the HOA is a passel of fucking hypocrites.

Now hypocrisy is natural. No human being – including Yours Truly – is immune to it. Therefore, I exercise patience when confronted with the milder sorts.

My patience, however, ends at the border of principle and pragmatism. This brings us to the matter of illegals' alleged contribution to the economy. Until redistricting became an issue, the typical North Fultonite was content to parrot the Tweedle-Dee/Tweedle Dum party line: importing unskilled foreign labor benefits the economy, and diversity is our strength. How, exactly, large numbers of poor, semiliterate foreigners are good for the economy as a whole –especially given its current state – was never specified. As no one has yet explained how diversity will make us any stronger than Rwanda, Lebanon, Northern Ireland or Yugoslavia, I don't imagine it ever will be specified.

Accepting on faith that our annual $13,000,000,000.00 cash hemorrhage (most of which flows into Mexico) is, in fact somehow good for us, I'll return to the matter of our "guests'" contribution to the economy and add a little personal history.

Owing to choices I made twenty years ago (I sometimes regret reading Atlas Shrugged immediately after being dumped – but not that often…), I've been in intimate, daily contact with the 43% of the population that, according to various talk-radio luminaries (all of whom are quite popular here in North Fulton), doesn't pay income taxes.

Among this chunk of the Great Unwashed (bear in mind that 20% of the populace, as per the 2008 Time Almanac, is under 15 years of age and can't be expected to pay income taxes) are many illegal aliens -- and some of the legal ones, as well. Granted, I'm the smartest redneck in the trailer park, but even my inbred neighbors understand that if these people use tax-funded social services without paying taxes themselves, they constitute a net drain on the economy. The HOA, however, didn't understand it – until redistricting reared its ugly (and melanin-laden) head.

So I'll leave it to them (and to Mort Zuckerman) to hash out, and stick to actuality, as opposed to the "reality" the neocons once claimed to create. I'm bound to trouble my beautiful mind in the process, but then again, patriotic duty has ever been a thankless task…

As my own earnings have never exceeded $25,000 per annum, barring one year in which a SWAG ("Scientific, Wild-Ass Guess") of an investment paid off 10:1 and kicked me into the next tax bracket, I honestly pity the poor, immigrant bastards; their children -- and the country as a whole.

My wife made seven grand last year, from which she paid 10% in federal income taxes. Just federal, mind you: this didn't include Social Security, Medicare or state income taxes. I made ten, from which I paid 11.1%, excluding the same built-in mordidas. (We don't just preach the simple life, by the way. We fucking well practice it…).

Unless the pundits are fibbing, nearly half the country – native and immigrant alike -- lives on $17,000 a year or less. Odd, as the total population is an estimated 299,330,000. That 299,330,000 is subdivided into 109,270, 000 households with an average number of 2.6 persons (amputees – ya just gotta love 'em…) per household.

By my primitive long division, incidentally, this makes for 2.73 persons per household – and reinforces my distrust of statistics. (I mean; what happened to the other fifteen million poor souls? Does a single-occupancy room in the Mogen-David Arms now constitute a "household"? If not, the combined population of several Baltic and Scandinavian countries has apparently fallen through the cracks, for the love of God! And that's just the tip of the iceberg.)

I'll try reconciling the claims of the chattering classes with available – and frequently contradictory -- stats in another post. How, for example, 43% of a 109,270,000 household country with a median income of $42K, a per-capita GDP of $37,610.00 and an average household size of 2.6 can avoid paying income taxes is incomprehensible.

Bear in mind that a median figure is the midpoint in a distribution of values, with equal values to either side. If, for example, we take Oprah Winfrey (we'll be very conservative and assume she makes $10,000,000.00 a year), a single real-life "Dilbert" at $42,000.00 a year, and ten thousand winos, each of whom panhandles a grand a year (presumably from Oprah and Dilbert), we conclude that median income is $42,000.00.

It's mathematically true, but not a reflection of the real economic situation. In actuality, we have one multimillionaire, one cubicle-bound Babbitt, and ten thousand chemically dependent "urban nomads" chipping into the post-Locke pot. This renders median figures every bit as misleading as mean figures (by the mean method, everyone winds up with roughly $2,000.00 -- thereby delighting pinkos who've never tried to live on $2,000.00 a year), and probably explains why statisticians love both.

"Figures don't lie, but liars figure," as the saying goes…

So I'll leave them to lie and figure to their hearts' content.

Mags and I have old-fashioned values (mine are downright Elizabethan…), above-average IQs, and a knack for handicraft, bartering and bargain hunting. Therefore, living on next-to-nothing is easier for us than for others. Being halfway decent people (well, my wife is, at any rate…), we actually pity the 43% of the population -- native and immigrant alike -- who make even less than we do. Who are we to deny their children an education – especially when they're living on less than $17,000 in metro Atlanta, in which a cheap apartment costs nearly ten grand a year?

Moving beyond Atlanta, 299,330,000 x 0.43 ≈ 128,700,000. 128,700,000 x .20 leaves us roughly 2,574,000 downtrodden rugrats – presumably of all colors and ethnicities -- to educate, nationwide. Among these, to reiterate, are the children of many of our Gastarbeiter. As it happens, many of them live right here in Roswell, and many of them no-speaka-da-Eenglish.

Granted, educating them will be expensive, but no more so than ladling out welfare and having them use emergency rooms as de facto clinics for the rest of their lives. And it'll certainly prove cheaper than "winning hearts and minds" abroad by plying every Iraqi and Afghan tot with copies of Daddy's Roommate and Free to Choose.

So much for mathematics and abstractions: when pink fairy and neocon troll alike stop spinning data to "prove" their own predetermined conclusions (and stop pissing on my leg whilst trying to tell me it's raining), I'll stop calling bullshit on them.

If the 43% figure North Fulton's "achievers" so love is correct; there are quite a few desperately poor, underachieving immigrants in our fair city - many of whom will do anything to ensure a better life for their children. Since Roswell, as a community, didn't mind spending its taxes on free health care for 'em in exchange for their "lowball" labor, it shouldn't mind educating their kids. Consider it an (admittedly shaky) investment in the future.

Given the IQ and income gaps (see IQ and the Wealth of Nations, by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen) between North Fulton's "Minions of Honk" and our rapidly multiplying immigrant community, the latter group of children will probably benefit more from contact with the former than vice versa – assuming that they assimilate. I don't think we'll approach economic or educational parity within the next few decades, though.

Heredity, culture and the demands of survival are unforgiving masters. Should the Gentle Reader doubt this, I'd invite him to study the survival/success story of the Ashkenazi Jews -- the most intelligent human beings on earth, as a whole. Legally barred from farming and similar occupations in much of Europe, many turned to education, finance and the arts and sciences -- with predictable results: survival of the smartest."

But the shtetl and the barrio are very different places. Separated by time, culture, geography and genetics, it's unlikely that they'll develop along parallel lines. Moreover, the "jobs Americans won't do" are largely menial, requiring little abstract intelligence. In all probability, we'll end up with yet another disenfranchised, unassimilated, permanent underclass. Said underclass is already here, as a matter of fact. And they aren't going anywhere. That particular horse has long since escaped, and it's much too late to close the barn door. Roswell's choice, then, is not whether the new underclass remains, but whether or not it remains unassimilated and permanent.

Exposing these children to the hard, cold world of intellectual competition would only benefit them – and us, in the long run. To restate an earlier point: The pool of cheap labor is here to stay. The "anchor babies" said pool produces are American citizens, and entitled to the same "rights" as the rest of us – even as their non-citizen parents are apparently entitled to certain social services, the "nickel and dime" nature of which prevented most North Fultonites from perceiving them until it was too late.

When they did, though, the HOA needed my Mexican-American wife and me to act against the children of the competition they had forced us to subsidize (broke as we are, we're still part of the 57% who pay taxes…). To say that the prospect neither inspired her to unprecedented levels o' hyphenated patriotism nor rocked my hairy, Scots-Irish balls is an understatement. Worse still, the shit-weasels wouldn't even admit that they'd fucked up, or that their addiction to ultra-cheap goods and services was part of the problem.

In a way, they reminded me of the tech-geeks who began pissing and moaning when their jobs were either outsourced to India or given to H-1-B Visa-holders. I'd have felt sorry for them – had I not heard so many of them smugly declare that blue-collar slobs facing a similar problem should just accept that we live in a changing world and find new lines of work. Needless to say, the attitude hardly warms my Grinchy li'l Hillbilly heart.

And neither does the HOA's. I have no patience with those who protest when their own oxen are gored, but don't give a shit for their neighbors'. To continue with the livestock metaphor, my oxen have been gored so often; they're long dead. The bitter irony is that I'm not the one who's been demolishing the fences in order to open the pasture to donkeys and other, less expensive beasts of burden. Therefore, I sure as hell ain't gonna help the erstwhile vandals rebuild 'em -- especially when they're only being built to keep Hispanic children out of "our" (the HOA's term, not mine) schools.

"Attend the final redistricting meeting to stand with us and voice your opinion. Wear a light blue shirt," read their flyer.

"Blue shirts," says I to m'ownself. "They were popular in Ireland a few decades ago, if memory serves me correctly." I then made a wisecrack about brown and black shirts to my wife. She laughed, and in the end, we did voice our opinion – by tossing the flyer into the trashcan (where such dross belongs) and going to the bar.

G'night.

Disingenuous Bullshit

A few weeks ago, I had the misfortune of reading John W. Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience.

When I say “misfortune,” I’m not implying that CWC is a reeking chunk of glib, sanctimonious bullshit, and I’d like to make that clear. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather like Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse, only half of the book qualifies as a reeking chunk of glib, sanctimonious bullshit.

(I found both titles on Barnes & Noble’s “bargain” table for a mere four smackers a pop, incidentally. Bein’ a total fuckin’ gentleman an’ all that, I’ll politely ignore the possibility of an inversely proportionate relationship ‘twixt final sale price and taurine feces-content…)

However much I loathed the book, honesty demands that I concede its merits. Conservatives Without Conscience is a razor-edged indictment of the pseudo-conservatism that has fulfilled Leonard Peikoff’s direst predictions (see his magnum opus, The Ominous Parallels; easily one of the most important and underrated books of the twentieth century). Paradoxically, it also provides a fascinating look into the mind of a wimped-out, compromise-prone, wouldn’t-say-“shit”-if-he-had-a-mouthful “moderate.”

Before stomping both book and author into the pavement, I’ll admit that Dean’s anger at the right in general – and the neocons in particular – is justified. The despicable treatment he and his wife received at the hands of G. Gordon Liddy, Chuck Colson, Len Colodny and their cronies (last seen inhabiting a herd of swine in the land of the Gadarenes) was enough to turn Mother Teresa into Mad Max. His analysis of conservatism’s disturbing, authoritarian shift is spot-on, and he does a very nice job of serving up the goods on such neocon idols as Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay and Dick Cheney.

That, however, is the best that can be said for Conservatives Without Conscience.

Far from being the “moderate” conservative and anti-authoritarian he’d have the reader believe, Dean is little more than an apologist/whitewasher for the radical left  -- and a man with an axe to grind.

The latter is understandable and forgivable: I’d sooner condemn Vlad the Impaler’s anti-Ottoman crusade than Dean’s pitiful swats at those who slandered him and his loved ones. The former, though, is neither understandable nor forgivable, considering his professed convictions.

Now I enjoy a good, old-fashioned Donnybrook and/or venom-spitting polemic as much as the next guy, OK?

Hell, I enjoy the latter so much; I actually write ‘em now and again. Unlike Dean, though, I don’t cringe behind a pious façade of civility when launching personal attacks and/or counterattacks: You fuck with the bull; you get the horns -- end of discussion.

 Johnny-boy, on the other hand, has no problem with donning a phony halo whilst exchanging ballshots with his opponents, low blow for low blow.

In case the Gentle Reader hasn’t guessed, I find the halo far more irritating than the ballshots. I respect men who choose to remain above the fray, remain silent, and let the facts (and instant replay) justify them. I also respect men who, once the black flag is unfurled and “Havoc!” cried; toss the gloves aside and advance; grinning, cracking their knuckles, and growling: “OK, jerkoff. You just signed your own fuckin’ death warrant. You wanna play rough? Let’s play rough then, by God!”

What I simply can’t abide is a squealing wanker who, after having a piece of his ear bitten off, gouges his opponent’s eyes – but still claims to be playing by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

John W. Dean – alas and alack -- is such a wanker.

In the light of Liddy & Co.’s despicable innuendoes, Dean was completely justified in pointing out that “Clitty” hid behind own his wife’s petticoats by signing his assets over to her while slandering ol’ Johnny and the missus. And slander it was, to be sure – albeit of a chickenshit, underhanded, plausibly deniable variety. According to Dean, the “Rodent Gourmet” (read Liddy’s Will -- you’ll get it…) and his pals, Coldsore and Colostomy, implied that Dean’s wife was a high-priced hooker, selling her ass to the DC elite.

That’s dirty pool, boys and ghouls -- and payback is a medevac. Under identical circumstances, I’d be tempted to trawl the Southside and ply the first loadie I met with $500.00 and a line of coke in exchange for alleging that Liddy, Colson and Colodny (dressed as Roller Derby queens and demanding that their six-year-old victim address them as “Gi-gi,” “Charlene” and “Lenora,” respectively) had molested him during a 1972 field trip to the Whitehouse.

Admittedly, I probably wouldn’t see it through. I’d still be sorely tempted, though; and if by chance I did retaliate in kind, I’d call it flat-out vengeance and nothing else. But that’s just me…

In dragging Liddy’s ol’ lady into the mess – even peripherally -- Dean retaliated in kind, but refuses admit it.

If it’s fair to assume that a man of Dean’s educational and professional accomplishments (White House legal counsel to Richard Nixon, chief minority counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee and associate deputy Attorney General) is sufficiently intelligent to judge methodological merit, then it’s equally fair to assume that he’s either an outright nutcase or pathologically dishonest. Admittedly, Dean does a wonderful job of exposing the slimy, Hitlerian underbelly of modern pseudo-conservatism. In so doing, though, he completely ignores the same side of modern liberalism. So much so, that upon reading his words, one would believe authoritarianism and elitism to be the exclusive preserve of the modern right.

In Dean’s alternate universe, only conservatives are capable of authoritarian attitudes. Having seen Ruby Ridge, Waco, “Know Your Customer,” “hate crime” laws and so-called “political correctness” (all the handiwork of the left, lest anyone need reminding), I found this rather odd. (I also wish I could have met Dean a few years ago, before I cleaned up my act -- whatever he’s on must be some really good shit…)

The veil of oddness was abruptly snatched away when I reached chapter two, thereby allowing the clear light of bullshit detection to shine in. As it happens, Dean – by his own admission – lifted his criteria for determining a given person’s degree of authoritarianism directly from Robert Altenmeyer’s so-called “RWA scale.”

The RWA scale, bluntly put, is a methodological nightmare. The survey used to measure it is a veritable DMZ of semantic landmines, binary thinking and non-sequiturs -- as objective as Das Kapital and as scientific as the Malleus Maleficarum. Worst of all, perhaps, it’s a “survey” in name only. Like a corporate “employee feedback” survey, Altenmeyer’s leaves the hapless respondent only: “agree strongly,” “agree,” “neutral,” “disagree,” and “disagree strongly,” as replies to a series of dubious statements, some of which are non-sequiturs or utterly pointless.

If, for example, I disagree with statement #18, “There is nothing wrong with premarital sexual intercourse,” I’m an authoritarian.

Well, I think there’s plenty wrong with it. I think it’s a sin, I think it cheapens sex overall, that it leads one to regard others as mere objects of self-gratification instead of actual human beings. In short, I disapprove of it very strongly. Not once, though, did I say it should be outlawed. So now having moral standards is somehow “authoritarian,” is that it, boys?

This, by the way, is where the Altenmeyers and Deans of the world step on their own peckers (meseemeth they have very, very short legs). The “anything goes” attitude they imply is the mark of a healthy mind apparently doesn’t include accepting so-called “authoritarian” attitudes in others – as long as they don’t try to force them on anyone else.

Let’s take another of my personal favorites, number 15:

“Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, criticizing religion, and ignoring the ‘normal way things are supposed to be done.’

Seems innocuous, doesn’t it? Well look again, and note the choice of conjunctions in the third clause. It’s a “package deal.” In order to agree or disagree, I must first concede that some of the best people in our country are engaged in all three activities. He wrote “and,” folks. Not “or.”

Moreover, Altenmeyer’s statement presupposes a fixed (but unmentioned) standard of “good,” and that some people are, in fact, “better” than others. Fine -- but by whose standards?  Ah, well. Who cares? If I say that Thomas Jefferson was a better man than Pol Pot, I’m safe, right? Both men engaged in all three behaviors, but by my standards, Jefferson was one of the best people our country ever produced.

A harmless word game, n’est ce pas?

It would be, except that in his book, John Dean combines it with the Social Dominance Orientation Survey (cooked up by four gents names Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth and Malle) when defining “right wing authoritarians.” In this gem of a survey, agreeing with the statements “Some people are just more worthy than others,” and “Some people are just inferior to others” is a sure sign of authoritarianism.

B-b-but wait! I just agreed that many shit-stirrers are among the best of us! How can I be an authoritarian?

For the record, I do think many shit-stirrers are among the best of us. Unfortunately, Dean’s twisted mix of the RWA and SDO surveys leaves the respondent “damned if [he does] and damned if [he doesn’t].” If I concede that my favorite shit-stirrers are among the best of us, I have to admit that (by definition, mind you – “best” is the superlative form of the adjective “good”) some folks ain’t exactly their equals.

Hopefully, the Gentle Reader gets the picture. 

As the RWA and SDO surveys are copyright, I’ve only included a few items from each, for the sake of criticism/review/lampooning. Now, since I haven’t the time to shred a thirty-five-question quiz, I’ll post my own “LWA” survey.

1. The established academic authorities are correct on most matters, while those without degrees are usually just “loudmouths” showing their ignorance.
    
2. The marriage “contract” should have no legal weight, and should be a purely private/religious matter.
   
   
3. Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to redistribute wealth, destroy the old-fashioned ways and enforce all forms of equality.
   
   
4. Hunters, smokers, and pro-lifers are just as healthy and moral as anybody else.
   
   
5. It is always better to trust the judgment of the recognized authorities in government and academia than to listen to the noisy reactionaries in our society, who are trying to impede progress.
   
   
6. Those who maintain the religious and cultural traditions of their ancestors are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who have rejected them.
   
   
7. The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to reject our traditional values completely, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers who question progressive ideas.
    
8. There is absolutely nothing wrong with home schooling.
   
   
9. Our country needs people who judge ideas on their merits, rather than upon whether they’re old or new.
   
   
10. Previous civilizations may have arrived at workable solutions to social problems that trouble us today, and should be studied.
    
    
11. No one should be forced to associate with company not of his choosing.
    
    
12. “Old fashioned” ways and values are of no merit in a changing world. 
    
    
13. You have to admire those who challenged a nine-man panel’s views and the law by protesting for gun ownership, for freedom of speech, or to abolish property taxes.
    
    
14. Gun owners and pro-lifers should be praised for being brave enough to defy Supreme Court rulings.
    
    
15. It is better to have hateful and intolerant speech in our communities than to allow the government the power to censor them.
     
16. The situation is getting so serious; the strongest methods would be justified if they led to consensus and social harmony.

Well, that about does it for today. Take the test and figure out whether or not you’re an authoritarian. Here’s the definition of the word, as per the American Heritage Dictionary, by the way: “Characterized by or favoring obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.”

The exclusive preserve of so-called “conservatives?” I think not.  Just think Janet Reno…

The Man Who Shot Liberty -- Period.

A few days before the election, I read a column so pathetic and poorly reasoned; I’ll not even mention the author’s name. Suffice to say that I began reading his work nearly thirty years ago, at the tender age of twelve, and that the respect I’ve since developed for both the man and his opinions precludes naming him.

As he’s a genuine soldier, one who has worn his country’s uniform and shed both his own blood and that of his nation’s enemies in its service, I won’t pull the despicable neocon stunt of calling him a “turncoat” or otherwise insulting him; I leave that kind of shit-slinging (and it is shit-slinging; nothing more) to the Hannitys, O’Reillys, Krauthammers, Levins and other useless “talking heads” of that ilk. I question neither his patriotism nor his sincerity – only his judgment.

Like many freedom-lovers of our acquaintance, my wife and I saw this year’s election as a no-win situation. For us, choosing between McCain and Obama was tantamount to choosing between inoperable cancer and AIDS. Both candidates score off the charts in terms of narcissistic and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders. Both are incurable elitists with near-pathological senses of entitlement. Both have drunk deeply of a sick, toxic cocktail of mixed delusions (persecution and grandeur). And both were completely out of touch with the “little people” they aspired to rule – although Obama was ultimately more adept at feigning empathy, a la Clinton’s “I feel your pain.”

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

 

-- Proverbs 26:11

 

Being no fonder of vomit than of folly, we opted for write-ins, by way of protesting the “Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dum” choice of candidates. When offered a choice between the lesser of two evils, we opted to reject evil, period: “Vade retro, Satana!”

To be sure, our decision was impractical. It was, however, principled, and we’d hoped that a larger slice of the electorate would vote on principle rather than personality, on conviction rather than compromise. We’d hoped that more people – given the pre-election nattering about “change”-- would say, “Not on my watch!”

 

But they didn’t.

 

Sadly, neither did the man whose column I’m lambasting.

 

If the Gentle Reader doesn’t understand that all government is dependent upon the use of force, he/she is cordially invited to stop breathing. Like it or not, the law is enforced by men with guns. The Constitution may “guarantee” certain rights, and the law may recognize certain rights. Both, however, are enforced by elected and appointed officials and the armed men they command. See the entire history of the human species for further clarification. This being the case, I refuse to give up my weapons or vote for anyone -- party affiliation notwithstanding -- who demands that I do so.

No individual, however well armed, can even hope to equal the destructive capability of a modern army and its weaponry. No individual in history has ever managed to equal the destructive capability of a demagogue and his followers, as our species’ dismal track record of conquest, slavery and genocide attests. The best he can do is “give as good as he gets” in the face of tyranny, which, by its very nature, is a government-owned monopoly.

This sad fact being self-evident to all but the most historically illiterate, it goes without saying that a man who seeks to disarm others has plans for them. Plans that aren’t necessarily in their best interests, and which necessitate rendering them defenseless. In short, he means to rule them rather than serve them.

Pardon my French, but fuck that. In my forty-one misspent years on this whirling chunk of rock, I’ve used a firearm to assert my “rights” to life, liberty and property no fewer than four times. Obama, to the best of my knowledge, has never faced the threat of direct physical violence. McCain, to the best of my knowledge, was at his best when dropping heavy-duty firepower on third-worlders from thousands of feet above their heads, but managed to fuck up despite his technological advantage. Pardon my redneck ass if that doesn’t exactly leave me all broke out with confidence in his overall judgment and threat-assessment capability…

Beyond opining that when either calls or votes for the wholesale disarmament of the American people; he speaks whereof he knows not, I’ll ask one simple question: If neither trusts me with my pistols and rifles, why should I trust either with the world’s largest nuclear/biological/chemical/radiological arsenal? If neither considers me fit to bear arms in my own defense in a dangerous world, why should I consider either fit to occupy the country’s highest elected office?

 

Apparently, my target hasn’t bothered to ask these simple questions, as he chose to endorse McCain. Worse still, he chose to abandon reason entirely and appeal to gut-level, lizard-brain fear in the process. Stopping just short of claiming an Obama presidency meant instant, nationwide gun confiscation, he neglected to mention that an attempt at instant, nationwide gun confiscation might very well result in the instant, nationwide deaths of any number of federal agents and/or National Guardsmen (the latter recently freed from the shackles of the inconvenient Posse Comitatus Act by a president whose policies he apparently supports).

 

(How I love “conservatives,” by the way! One moment, they preach the virtues of integrity and individual responsibility. The next, though, they invoke the “Nuernberg Defense,” especially when men who’ve sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution “morph” into jackbooted thugs on command…)

As he’s getting up in years, I can attribute his inability to “think deeply on this” to age. I can’t, however, account for his refusal to bring elementary reasoning into play. If he can still write coherent sentences, he can still put two and two together and arrive at four.

In his argument, this gent conceded that McCain’s voting record on firearms issues left something to be desired. Kudos for that, although it’s tantamount to saying that Pol Pot’s human rights record left something to be desired -- “Ye need not stop work to tell us. We knew it many seasons before.” Unfortunately, our boy also sank to the level of noting that Sarah Palin was staunchly pro-gun.

 

Pardon my French once again, but big fuckin’ deal.

 

When last I read the Constitution, the Vice President’s responsibilities were rather limited. The President and the President alone was legally empowered to pass or veto legislation -- period. Even the Vice President’s role as president pro tempore of the Senate doesn’t mean shit in this case, as (see article I, section 3, paragraph 4) he/she/it “…shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.”

 

To anyone even remotely acquainted with contemporary politics and the current Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dum ratio on Capitol Hill, the chance of the Senate being equally divided on the issue of gun control – or any other, for that matter -- is as likely as Sean Hannity reading the Downing Street Memo or the first three pages of the patriot act on the air. The Democrats hold the majority of Senate seats – end of discussion. Palin as tie-breaker under those circumstances?

Nice try. Unfortunately, the argument is as full of holes as the Branch Davidians.

The next item that rankled me – and rankled me badly – was the mention of appointments to the Supreme Court. Apparently, many Republicans and conservatives believe that a Republican presidency is an absolute guarantee of strict constructionist appointees to our once-great nation’s highest court. (And a “high” court it is, indeed. If empirical evidence is anything to go on, the “Nine Unknown Men[tal Cases]” spend more time getting high than the combined populations of Atlanta’s and Chicago’s southsides…)

Once again, he completely ignores McCain’s voting record. Unlike him, I’m inclined to wonder why a believer in a “flexible” Constitution would do any such thing. If McCain, as the talk-radio pundits have repeatedly (one might say reflexively) assured us, is a man of principle, why would any rational human being expect him to abandon his anti-gun and anti-liberty principles (i.e., his “flexibility,” the antithesis of principle, ironically enough) when appointing Supreme Court justices?

I’ll allow for the possibility of my target hoping McCain would be elected and then abruptly snuff it, leaving Palin in the driver’s seat. If so, I applaud his sentiments -- if not his rational faculty. It is, after all, equally possible that I’ll commence to shittin’ rose-scented gold bullion and pissin’ cancer-curing sody-pop on the morrow. I’m not counting on near-miracles of that sort, though, and if the author of the offending article was, he should have said so in the first place. Millions like me would almost certainly have cautioned him against taking such a precarious position, but that’s neither here nor there.

No, my guess is that a McCain presidency would have seen the appointment of justices who share McCain’s views. He isn’t a constructionist by any stretch of the imagination, so the likelihood of his appointing strict constructionists to the bench was minimal, at best.

My distaste for fear tactics and shoddy reasoning of this kind notwithstanding, I have to give the column’s author credit for mentioning the Second Amendment, period. In this year’s election, it was hardly an issue at all; a fact that annoyed me to no end. To the Republicans, the only issues worth addressing were the so-called “war on terror” (which has somehow become synonymous with the occupation of Iraq), the ever-undefined matter of “national security” and the prospect of higher taxes.

 

Anyone with different concerns was summarily dismissed as a crackpot or branded a “liberal,” a “turncoat,” or “unpatriotic.” (The irony of Northeastern, second- and third-generation Americans hurling such verbal brickbats at 9^th-14^th-generation “Old Americans” like me -- direct descendants of the earliest British colonists, our ancestors having arrived between 1607 and 1775 -- is as delicious as it is offensive, by the way.)

 

And my concerns were very different indeed. The ability to protect my family and myself was first and foremost among them. As the alleged nationwide drop-off in violent crime seems to have skipped my hometown, this is a very real concern. My wife works just off Holcomb Bridge Road (known to local LEOs as “the Holcomb Bridge drug corridor”), and for years, I worked the graveyard shift in an area increasingly “enriched” by immigration. To me, then, ready access to a firearm has nothing to do with hunting, target shooting or dick-waving; and everything to do with remaining alive, unharmed and un-robbed. Unlike Obama, McCain and the other nattering nabobs of the political class, I don’t have a 24-7 circle of bodyguards with ballistic vests and submachineguns standing between me and the “hard working” illegal aliens they so adore.

I should also mention that if the threat of Islamic terrorism (I suppose the “Yellow Peril” and the “Red Threat” have been supplanted by the “Tan Terror”) is as great as McCain would have us believe, he’d want more armed Americans, not fewer. That, however, is another matter entirely.

And speaking of terrorists and foreigners (and bears, oh my!), there’s the matter of open borders and unlimited immigration. Only a “We create our own reality!” neocon could believe that an unsecured perimeter is conducive to national security. Only such a reality-challenged lunatic could believe that flooding the country with immigrants from countries with no tradition of individual responsibility or economic/social/political liberty is somehow good for the country as a whole. Admittedly, a permanent underclass of disenfranchised, unassimilated “semi-citizens” benefits the Democratic party (general happiness and prosperity would render them politically irrelevant, after all) and the Republican party’s corporate backers, with their seemingly unquenchable thirst for cheap labor – but it bodes ill for the rest of us.

 

My next concern is the unchecked growth of the Federal Government – courtesy of the Republicans. Not only was another cabinet-level department unnecessary and a waste of time and money; the shady, draconian, meta-constitutional powers conferred by patriot act I&II and the Continuity of Operations plan present a clearer and more present danger to my liberty than all the world’s terrorist organizations combined. This, needless to say, brings me full circle, to the matter of gun control.

When the Founding Fathers drafted the Second Amendment, they weren’t concerned with hunting, target shooting or producing Olympic gold medallists. Since the dark days of the Wilson administration, an entire specious school of “Constitutional scholarship” has grown up around the Second Amendment, but the founders’ intent remains clear, as expressed in their own words. Anti-Federalists considered standing armies injurious to liberty, and rightly so. Federalists conceded their point, but counter-argued that the militia – an armed populace, as later defined in the United States Militia Act (1792) – served to diminish the threat.

 

The Second Amendment, then, was a compromise between the two schools of thought. One of the shortest amendments in the Bill of Rights, it reads – plainly and simply: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” (Emphasis mine.)

 

When viewed in the context of The Federalist Papers – the Federalists’ “sales pitch” for foisting their proposed constitution upon the nation – the Second Amendment was the legal guarantee of a right asserted in the Declaration of Independence, the very raison d’etre of the American Revolution: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it…”

 

As the founders -- Federalist and Anti-Federalist alike -- understood, the common man and his weapons (i.e., me and my weapons and my countrymen and their weapons, in this day and age) were the “thin red line” between reasonable national security and outright despotism. In the sociopolitical context of the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath, then, the right to keep and bear arms implied far more than merely defending oneself and one’s country against Indians, outlaws and foreign oppressors -- it also implied defending oneself and one’s country against domestic tyranny.

 

My target once claimed to have been in accord with the English and French political thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the time, I believed him -- and still do, to a certain extent. Perhaps, in his own mind, he still is. Unfortunately, his decision to endorse a “stealth tyrant” (McCain) as the only alternative to a quasi-Hitlerian windup doll with an apparent messiah-complex and every symptom of narcissistic personality disorder (I thank God for merely saddling me with manic-depression, by the way – I truly got off with a “slap on the wrist”…) gives the lie to his professed convictions.

I chose to adhere to mine: I voted for neither.

 

The poison of tyranny, whether administered in homeopathic or allopathic doses, is still tyranny – and still poison. Like lead and similar toxins, literal or metaphoric, it accumulates in the body politic and inevitably leads to toxemia and death (both conditions neatly conforming to the definition of “change,” for the benefit of the the Obama-worshippers among us...). To me, the idea of voting for McCain because he was slightly less authoritarian than Obaba was utterly ludicrous; it amounted to choosing to take the smaller of two doses of poison.

 

Thanks, but no thanks. I chose neither.

 

Beyond the article’s apologist stance (“Yeah, McCain sucks, but he’s the best we’ve got to offer”), what saddened me most was its near-hysterical, yet vaguely threatening tone. Like so much Republican rhetoric of late, it reminded me of a frightened school bully demanding protection money from increasingly indifferent children, while screaming that a rival bully was even worse than himself. In the world of politics, as in the schoolyard, the weaker “children” will eventually give their lunch money to the bully’s rival -- just for a change of pace – while the stronger ones will tell both to go fuck themselves.

 

The implied threat (“Vote for us -- or else!”) was indicative of yet another fatal flaw in the Republicans’ collective character: a breathtakingly arrogant sense of entitlement.

Granted, this country isn’t a democracy – thank God. All the same, the United States government “deriv[es] its just powers from the consent of the governed.” When a party and its candidates scoff at the will and values of its core constituency, said constituency can be expected to withdraw its consent at the ballot box. For nearly eight years now, the Republican Party has ignored the will of its voting-base and spit in their faces – but still has the audacity to demand their vote. This year, as in 2006, many of us ignored their demands.

In keeping with their ostensible “enemy’s” attempt to reduce us to crude, cartoonish stereotypes, we did indeed “cling to our guns and religion” – while letting go of the Republican Party by not voting for its candidates. And now, the “Party of Reagan” is angry with us, as if we were the ones who’d failed them and not the other way around.

We wanted reduced immigration and tightly controlled borders. They offered us McCain – an unabashed supporter of open borders and amnesty, and who never saw an H-1-B visa he didn’t like.

We wanted an end to wars against abstractions, tactics and nouns. They offered us McCain, who, not satisfied with the quagmire in Iraq and the unfinished business in Afghanistan, now wants to “Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran,” in his own words.

We wanted to stop subsidizing abortions with our tax dollars. They offered us McCain, who is anything but pro-life.

And we wanted to preserve our right to keep and bear arms. They offered us McCain, whose anti-gun voting record rivals Schumer’s or Feinstein’s.

Predictably, they lost our support – and the election.

Unfortunately, that leaves us with Obama in the Whitehouse and Democrat majorities in the House and Senate. This means that my target’s fears are justified to a certain extent. A federal gun ban is a very real possibility. There are, however, an estimated 80,000,000 privately owned firearms in the United States. Even allowing for collectors, survivalists and hardcore “gun goons” and “gear queers,” most of whom own a minimum of three firearms (a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol or revolver) each, there are at least 10,000,000 gun owners in this once-great country. This makes the American public the second largest armed body on earth.

 

Does an Obama presidency, then, portend the complete disarmament of the American people, as my target asserted?

Let’s leave that up to those 10,000,000+ armed citizens. To paraphrase Jim Morrison: “They got the guns, but we got the numbers – and a few guns of our own.”

 

G’night and God bless.

Defending America -- By Exposing Its Vulnerabilities to Its Enemies

In his October 2008 Soldier of Fortune column, neocon idol Ollie “Arms for Hostages” North (remember the ‘80s, when the U.S. did negotiate with terrorists?) does his part to protect our once-great nation -- by telling potential “evildoers” how best to attack Washington DC’s Union Station.

 

(Isn’t that a violation of the patriot act or something? Now let me get this straight: If I reprint a hundred-year-old article on homemade pyrotechnics, I’m committing treason and enabling the enemy. Ollie, though, can provide Al Qaeda with an actual game plan, and everything’s kosher? Is that how it works? Just curious…)

 

Read on. Ye’ jes’ can’t make this shit up…

 

“Unlike other public buildings in Washington, including our nearby Fox News bureau, there are no barriers to prevent a vehicle from turning off the street and into the front entrance of Union Station. Worse, the nearest vehicle lane – a taxicab rank – is less than seven feet from the face of the structure. In short, there is no offset protection whatsoever. You don’t have to be paranoid to envision a VBIED bringing down the 96-foot ceilings and turning the busy lobby into a charnel house.” 

 

-- “Beirut Comes to Washington,” Soldier of Fortune, October 2008, p. 82, paragraph 8.

 

North, of course, subsequently covers his ass by saying, “Had Amtrak officials not promised to take ‘immediate, interim measures to prevent VBIED attacks,’ I would not have acknowledged this vulnerability publicly.” (Paragraph 12)

 

That’s nice, Ollie. Here’s your lollipop. I feel ever so much fucking safer now, especially when I take Amtrak’s “track record”  -- no pun intended, of course -- for security (I’ve visited a few Amtrak stations. In every case, the clientele immediately brought post-Katrina New Orleans to mind…) and customer satisfaction (“Then take Greyhound, mothafucka!”) into account.

 

Since North’s done his patriotic duty and protected his country from the ravening Mussalman hordes by telling them how and where to strike, I’ll do my part as well.

 

In theory, Al Qaeda could partially paralyze the economic infrastructure of metro Atlanta -- “the New York of the South” – by purchasing copies of the local high society rag, Jezebel, and either greasing the “movers and shakers” oft found mugging within its pages or bombing the locales they frequent.

 

This sinister mission could easily be accomplished by savvy operatives infiltrating Atlanta’s vast (but dewy-eyed and innocent – we all know that illegal aliens disregard our nation’s sovereignty and borders out of sheer love for the almighty US of A and bear us no ill will...) undocumented third-world immigrant community; taking minimum wage, cash-under-the-table jobs and “running with it,” as it were.

 

Such critical vulnerabilities cry out for immediate attention!

 

Before Mayor Franklin applies even another molecule of peroxide to her “do,” she should demand that the feds cough up the cash and manpower to transform each of Atlanta’s vulnerable streets into carbon copies of Pennsylvania Avenue, as described by Ollie: “…a maze of bollards, vehicle barriers, high fences, and heavy gates. Without the appropriate pass, it is impossible to get a vehicle near the White House or any other federal building.”   

 

There. Now I’m a “great American,” too.

 

No need to thank me. Just lookin’ out for ya…

Print Media: A Readable Newspaper At Last!

I don’t usually plug newspapers. Most of them, in my experience, are bona fide catbox liners, produced by liars for the consumption of idiots. After fifteen or so minutes of skimming a typical fishwrapper of this sort, I’m ready to throw up my hands in utter despair and groan, “What planet are these fuckwits from?”
 

Every so often, though, I stumble across a newspaper that neither insults my intelligence nor moves me to crank out page after page of venomous, profanity-laced invective. These exceptions to the rule, sadly enough, are always local dailies or weeklies with limited resources and circulation. What they lack in distribution, however, they more than make up for with integrity and devotion to the seemingly (and sadly) obsolete “five w’s and the h.” Such an exception is the Roswell Beacon, a gutsy, refreshing little weekly that’s a joy to read. Unlike certain of their fawning, wouldn’t-say-“shit”-if-they-had-a-mouthful competitors, the staff of the Beacon tackle local political issues with gusto and integrity that hearkens back to the Pre-World War II “golden age” of American journalism.

While the Beacon focuses primarily on local issues, its national coverage isn’t too shabby, either. This week’s issue, for example, contains an excellent article on Russia as a resurgent regional and world power. Entitled “Rising Russia – The Bear Awakens,” the article (co-written by one Col. Robert E. Quinn and a Beacon staffer named John Fredericks) takes an honest, hard-hitting look at a subject ignored equally by the Democrat toadies at the networks and CNN, and the “fairly unbalanced,” neocon “barking moonbats” at Fox News.

I’m not familiar with either man, but the article suggests that both “have their shit together,” a rarity in this day and age. Unlike the “see no evil” idiots at CNN and the networks, and the “see evil everywhere but right here” idiots at Fox (all of whom suffer from the “tunnel vision” that results from having one’s head up one’s ass), Quinn and Fredericks actually understand the global political, economic and military situation. I don’t agree with all their conclusions, but it’s clear that both are students of realpolitik, and more concerned with the way things are than with “creating [their] own reality.” Eschewing both ideology and mythology, Quinn and Fredericks shine the cold, hard light of objective reality on world affairs, with an approach reminiscent of Michael Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris. Their 4^th Generation Warfare blog is a must-read, and these guys are going into this blog’s sidebar.

Happy reading.

 

http://Beaconcast.com

Parcel O' Rogues, P. II

Whilst perusing the latest issue of The Ulster Scot, I came across one of the most infuriating, despicable outrages ever perpetrated within this once-great nation’s border – an outrage so unpardonable and monstrous, that I’ve no choice but to award the coveted “Baw’bag of the Week” award to our own Library of Congress.

I suppose it’s no great surprise to the regular reader of this li’l blog that like many -- if not most -- natives of the Upper South, I’m largely of Scottish and Northern Irish (Ulster Scots) descent. (The St. Andrew’s cross on the much-maligned Confederate Flag should serve as subtle clue as to our ethnic origin.)

While the term “Scots-Irish” may not be technically correct (many of our ancestors took the direct route from Scotland to the Americas, bypassing the Ulster Plantation entirely, while many Appalachians’ progenitors came from Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Northumbria, in England), there’s no denying the fact that numerically and culturally, the Northern Irish element of our population was dominant. Therefore, “Scots-Irish” is a sobriquet I bear proudly.

Like many modern Ulster-Scots and Scottish-descended Americans, I’m “unco’” proud of my roots, and while less sensitive and self-conscious (we consider whining unmanly, after all) about my ancestry than certain members other ethnic groups, I don’t like seeing my heritage disparaged – especially given our role in founding this country.

It may be tactless and immodest of me to remind the Gentle Reader of this, but without us, there wouldn’t be a United States of America.

Unanimously Patriot in our sentiments, we filled the ranks of the Continental Army and various militias in numbers far out of proportion to our share of the general populace. As historian James Leyburn notes:

An Episcopalian of Philadelphia said that “a Presbyterian Loyalist was a thing unherd of.” A Hessian captain wrote in 1778, “Call this war by whatever name you may, only call it not an American rebellion; it is nothing more or less than a Scoth-Irish Presbyterian rebellion.” It was reported that King George III characterized the Revolution as a “Presbyterian war,” and that Horace Walpole remarked in Parliament, “There is no use crying about it. Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson, and that is the end of it.” A representative of Lord Dartmouth wrote from New York in November 1776 that “Presbyterianism is really at the Bottom of the whole Conspiracy, has supplied it with Vigour, and will never rest, till something is decided upon it." Jonathan D. Sergeant, member of the Continental Congress from New Jersey, said that the Scotch-Irish were the main pillar supporting the Revolution in Pennsylvania. A New Englander who opposed the rupture with England declared the Scotch-Irish to be, with few exceptions, “the most God-provoking democrats on this side of Hell." An English official in America said that the war “is at the Bottom, very much a religious War,” and that Calvinists had “a pretty strong inclination to every sort of Democracy.”

Since you probably weren’t taught that in school, I just thought I’d add it, in the interest of establishing the proper historical perspective.

What do we receive, by way of gratitude?

A slap in the face, as reported by the April issue of The Ulster Scot (p. 15):

“Leading Scottish literary figures have criticized a decision by the United States Library of Congress in Washington to reclassify their work as a subsection of English literature.”

The article continues, “Under the new rules, Scottish literature and more than 40 Scottish subjects are to be grouped under three headings. The include English Literature – Scottish Authors, Dialect Literature – Scottish, and Scotland – Literature.”

I realize that these days, the typical public-schooled American probably can’t find Texas on a map (or his ass with both hands and a search warrant, for that matter), but is anyone so ignorant and historically illiterate as to need to be told that Scotland is not England, that we are not English, and that Scots (whether Lallans-proper or the Ulster dialect) is sufficiently different from Received Standard English as to constitute a language in its own right?

If even a one of the low-grade retardates at the LOC can read this (an excerpt from Conal Gillespie’s latest column) without resorting to a glossary or copy of The Hamely Tongue, I’ll concede his/her/its point:

“Noo the aulder fowk amang ye wul hae wrocht oot hoo George was guid aa settin’ a blunt sa’ an’ the fiddle eh ‘pleyed’ wus a yoke at ye strapped roun’ yer kist an’ seeded a fiel’ bae pullin’ hits bow owre an’ beck.”

I rest my fuckin’ case.

For the record, I hold no grudge against the English people (given my Anglo-Norman ancestry, courtesy of my Ma, doing so would be tantamount to self-hate), the English nation, the English language (it is, after all, my mother tongue) -- or even fish and chips, malt vinegar; smelly, “Hawkwind-ish” hippies; and faggoty post-punk bands sportin’ green an’ purple hair. Nor do I disparage the profound influence of such English thinkers as Locke and Paine upon American political thought.

But Englishmen and Scotsmen are not the same people. England and Scotland are not one country, the Act of Union notwithstanding. In the age of so-called “multiculturalism,” – especially in a country obsessed with said -- one would expect a tad more cultural sensitivity from the Library of Congress.

Did the vile sons of bitches see fit to classify all English-language literature as “British,” I’d be less inclined to protest as vehemently as I have, but they haven’t – and deliberately, as nearly as I can tell. If Mexican, Central American, and South American literature, for example, are being reclassified as Spanish Literature, I’ll shut the fuck up. Unfortunately, I’ve heard nary a word of any such development, nor do I expect to.

No, this is the so-called “Information Age.” As nearly any fact one could hope to uncover is available for free, on the Internet, I can’t help but interpret this reclassification as anything but an act of cultural genocide – the marginalization of my people.

Well, fuck that and the horse it rode up on.

The day upon which Scottish literature is reclassified as “English” literature might as well be the day upon which David Hume is reclassified as an “English” philosopher; Burns and Scott are reclassified as “English” poets; Bruce, Moray and Wallace are reclassified as “English” warriors, and Bonny Prince Charlie is reclassified as a bona fide “English” king, rather than as a mere pretender to the throne.

If Scottish literature is to be demoted to a mere sub-category of English literature; and if the Scots tongue (the progenitor of Ullans and Appalachian) is to be demoted to a mere sub-dialect of English, I’ve no choice but to give my regards to the fuckin’ idiots whose miserable, tax-paid asses staff the Library of Congress in my own “demoted” dialect; “the braid Scots”:

Git tae fuck, ye’ baw’bags!

"A Measure of Wheat for a Penny, and Three Measures of Barley for a Penny..."

And I beheld, and lo, a black horse; andhe that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

-- Revelation 6:5-6

(Dedicated to disciples of Milton Friedman)

Interesting piece here, from The Age.

A 130% rise in the global cost of wheat in the past year, caused partly by surging demand from China and India and a huge injection of speculative funds into wheat futures, has forced the Government to hit flour millers with three rounds of stiff mark-ups. The latest — a 30% increase this month — has given rise to speculation that Japan, which relies on imports for 90% of its annual wheat consumption, is no longer on the brink of a food crisis, but has fallen off the cliff.

According to one government poll, 80% of Japanese are frightened about what the future holds for their food supply.

Last week, as the prices of wheat and barley continued their relentless climb, the Japanese Government discovered it had exhausted its ¥230 billion ($A2.37 billion) budget for the grains with two months remaining. It was forced to call on an emergency ¥55 billion reserve to ensure it could continue feeding the nation.

No need to worry, though. That can't happen here, right?

"Earth Day," My Ass! or; "A Greener Shade of Red"?

It's Lenin's birthday, folks.

Coincidence?

I think not...

While You Were Worrying About Arabs...

Not long ago, I was chatting on the phone with one of my bros, who also happens to be a regular GH reader. At the time, I was comparing a 1975 Rand-McNalley Road Atlas to a 2005 edition and tallying up the number of Southwestern towns (particularly in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada) that have apparently been abandoned in the last thirty years.

My bro seemed to find it interesting, but thought I'd find what follows even more interesting.

He was right.

The latter-day "ghost town" is a fascinating subject, to be sure -- but nowhere near as fascinating as the number of people who, ghost-like, simply vanish into thin air every year.

Have a gander at these NCIC stats, concerning missing persons. Disturbing stuff, eh?

While you're at it, scroll down and check the % change for 2005 and the sheer number of missing children. Even more disturbing, eh?

I wonder how the mainstream media missed that one...

So many mysteries, so little time...

Sensible Questions and Observations

The redoubtable Dennis Mangan is at it again, "counterculturing" the counterculture (or rather, the establishment, realistically speaking) with a vengeance -- and leading me to wonder if I haven't been a bit premature in my decision to cut back on the politically oriented "swearblogging"...

Well done, sir! My hat's off to you!